2. But the unmeasured means as redisposable in an as yet undetermined way bring to consciousness established measured uses to which the means have been heretofore assigned in definite amounts. In this way the process of determining a definite quantum as redisposable (which is to say, of attaining to a definite acceptable plan of conduct) can begin. How, then, does this fact of past assignment to uses still recognized as desirable figure in the situation? In the first place the past assignment may have been (1) an outcome of past economic valuation, (2) an unhesitating or non-economic act executive of an ethical decision, or (3) an act of more or less conscious obedience to "conscience" or "authority." In either case it now stands as a course of conduct which at the time was, in the way explained above, _sanctioned_ to the agent, to the "energetic" self, by the means and conditions recognized as bearing upon it. In this sense, then, we have, in this recognition of the past adjustment and of the economic character which the means now have in virtue of it, what we may term a judgment of "energy-equivalence" between the means and their established uses. For to the agent it was the essential meaning of the sense of sanction felt when the means were assigned to these uses that the "energetic" self would on the whole be furthered thereby--and this in view of all the sacrifices that this use would entail, or in view of the sacrifices required for the production of the means, if the case were one in which the means were not at hand and could only be secured by a more or less extended production process.